She looked back at me, her smile fading as she suddenly seemed to remember why we’d come to the surface in the first place. “Yes,” she said. “Well… maybe we could just climb one of the hills near the lodge and watch the ring pattern for a while. Until you feel better.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
The elevator let us out inside the lodge, just off the equipment rental area and near one of the airlocks. We headed back outside and walked along the red pylons to the top of the first big hill. There we found a comfortable place to sit together, and as I snuggled close and put my arm around her shoulders, I motioned for her to turn off her comm.
I leaned my helmet against hers, hoping that to any observers we looked like two lovers getting as romantically physical as it was possible to get in vac suits. “Can you hear me?” I called.
“Yes,” she called back, her voice sounding tinny as the sound transmitted across the contact between our helmets. “Why did you want to watch the torchferry arrive?”
“I don’t, actually,” I told her. “But someone bugged our suite while we were on our submarine tour, and I needed to find a reason to get you out here where I could be sure no one could eavesdrop.”
“We were bugged?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You mean while we were there in the suite?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, her annoyance fading into embarrassment. “Right.”
“Which is also why I had to tell you a few half-truths,” I went on. “Starting with those drill marks on the tunnel wall. Someone made them, all right, but whoever it was didn’t stash anything in there. At least, nothing important.”
She drew away to frown at me, and I saw her lips moving. I tapped her faceplate in reminder; grimacing with a little more embarrassment, she turned again and leaned her helmet against mine. “Sorry,” she said. “I said, how do you know?”
“First of all, because it was a little too obvious,” I said, watching her face out of the corner of my eye, hoping her reactions would give me some clue as to how much of this she already knew. So far, it all seemed completely new to her. “The marks were right there in the lighted areas, there hadn’t been any effort to disguise or obliterate them, and they quit showing up past that bottleneck, past the point where there was no chance of the Halkas getting in and finding any more of them.”
“Maybe they just got more careful.”
“No,” I said. “Remember that current we ran into outside the cavern? That showed Modhra’s underground ocean keeps itself moving, probably driven by tidal forces from Cassp. But there weren’t any currents inside the tunnel we explored. If someone had made the kind of opening in the far end that we talked about, even if they camouflaged it afterward, the water would have been sloshing back and forth and we’d have been tossed around like guppies.”
“Then what was the point of the marks?”
“The same point as the drunk act that Bellido put on for me on the Quadrail,” I said. “Something big and bold and obvious to get people looking and thinking the wrong direction.”
“So they didn’t actually steal a submarine?” she asked, sounding thoroughly lost now.
“Actually, I’m guessing they did,” I said. “The fake drunk had all the right cues and telltales, which tells me these people pay attention to the details. If you want someone to waste their time searching the caverns, you need to give them a good reason to do so.”
“Yes, I see,” Bayta said. “And you don’t want the Halkas to know about this?”
“No,” I said, watching her closely. “Because I think the Bellidos are on our side.”
There was a moment of silence. This was the perfect moment, I knew, for her to confess that she already knew that. The perfect moment to finally fill me in on everything else she knew about Modhra and what was going on here.
Only she didn’t. “You mean the people who hit you on the head and locked you in a spice crate?” she asked instead.
“I mean the people who didn’t injure me,” I growled, a sudden stirring of anger sending heat into my face. “I mean the people who could have simply broken my leg if all they’d wanted was to put me out of action for a while.” I slid my helmet around the side of hers so that I could glare straight into her eyes. “I mean the people who haven’t been lying through their teeth to me since this whole thing started.”
Her face had gone suddenly rigid. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“You know what I mean,” I bit out, suddenly sick of it all. “You know what’s going on here. You know all about JhanKla and the Bellidos. You’ve known right from the beginning.”
She tried to pull away from me. I grabbed the back of her helmet and yanked it back, pressing it firmly against mine. “Go ahead—tell me I’m wrong,” I invited harshly. “Tell me that I’m imagining things.”
“Frank—I’m sorry,” she said, the words coming out in little puffs of rapid air. Her face had come alive with fear, her throat muscles working rapidly. “I couldn’t—”
“Of course you can’t,” I cut her off. “So now tell me why I shouldn’t just go ahead and bail on this whole damn thing.”
“No!” she all but gasped. Her face shot through the whole range of fear and landed squarely on sheer terror. “Please. You can’t leave.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “The Bellidos didn’t hurt me because the fake drunk saw me take the chip from the Spider and figured I was on their side. Only I’m not really on their side, am I? I’m not on anyone’s side. All I am is a dupe.”
I let go of her helmet, suddenly too disgusted with her to touch even that. “I won’t be a dupe, Bayta,” I said. “Not for you; not for your damn Spiders.”
Her breath was coming in hyperventilating huffs, her face still rigid with fear. “Please, Frank,” she managed. “Please. You can’t leave me here alone—”
I didn’t want to hear it. Standing up, I turned my back on her and strode off down the ice hill. I kept walking, up the next small hill and down into its valley, until she was out of sight. Then, folding my arms across my chest, I stopped and glared up at the shifting ring pattern blazing softly across the Modhran sky.
I should do it, I told myself firmly. I should turn around, go to the hotel and pack my stuff, and then head straight back to the Tube on the next torchferry. Maybe I’d drop her fancy unlimited-travel pass in the fire pit before I left, a nice dramatic gesture that would make it clear to her and the Spiders what I thought of them. I had places to go and things to do, and the last thing I needed was to hang around here in the cold and dark with a bull’s-eye painted on my chest. The sooner I shook the dust of this off my feet, the better.
I had just about made up my mind to do it when the face of the dead messenger outside the New Pallas Towers floated up from my memory.
The Spiders had gone to a lot of trouble to entice me into this game. Someone else had gone to even more trouble to keep me out of it.
And I was damned if I was going to quit before I knew what the game was.
Bayta was sitting where I’d left her, her knees hunched up against her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around them. Her whole body seemed to be quivering as I approached, perhaps shaking in fear or anger. I sat back down beside her… and it was only then that I realized what the shaking actually was.
She was crying. My stoic, wooden-faced Bayta was actually crying.
I leaned my helmet against hers. “One question,” I said, forcing calmness into my voice. “Are the Bellidos on our side?”